Over the course of three arduous weeks, Namek's three suns never set, casting an unbroken, merciless light across the emerald landscape.
While Frieza's army terrorized the central continents with loud, theatrical cruelty, Vegeta and Escallion operated silently. They moved along the low canyons and deep ocean trenches, keeping their Ki suppressed.
Whenever Frieza dispatched small scouting parties or perimeter patrols, the two Saiyans struck with terrifying precision. They would drop from the sky, eliminate four or five soldiers in silent, physical blurs before a single distress call could be transmitted, and vanish back into the wilderness.
Vegeta's raw power, combined with Escallion's surgical efficiency, left Frieza's logistics in subtle disarray. Supply lines vanished. Outpost communications went dark without explanation. Zarbon and Dodoria began reporting "scouter glitches" to Frieza, entirely unaware that two rogue Saiyans were systematically thinning their ranks.
The real friction between the two Saiyans, however, came down to the native Namekians.
On the fourteenth day, they located an isolated Namekian village nestled in a basin of giant, blue ajisa trees. The village elder stood near the center of the settlement, holding a glowing, basketball-sized sphere marked with four red stars.
Vegeta had landed on the village perimeter like a comet, his dark eyes fixed on the artifact, his jaw set to annihilate the defenseless villagers the moment they hesitated.
"Hand it over, old man," Vegeta had snarled, a spark of yellow Ki igniting at his palm. "Or I'll turn this entire valley to ash."
Before Vegeta could raise his hand, Escallion stepped directly into his line of fire, his face an unreadable mask of cold composure.
"Lower your hand, Vegeta," Escallion said flatly.
Vegeta's eyes narrowed into slit-like embers. "Get out of my way, Escallion. We don't have time for negotiations. We kill them, take the ball, and move."
"And then what?" Escallion reasoned smoothly, his tone completely devoid of mercy or malice, just raw, calculating logic. "If Frieza arrives at a dead village, he tracks the destruction straight to us. Worse, if these Namekians possess the ability to destroy the spheres or seal them upon death, your entire crusade for immortality ends right here.
Escallion turned his head toward the elder, speaking with a calm, measured authority. "We are not with the tyrant Frieza. He seeks your extinction. We seek his destruction. Give us the sphere, and we leave your people untouched. Refuse, and you face both Frieza's army and us."
The elder looked between the furious, lethal pressure radiating off Vegeta and the chilling, absolute sincerity in Escallion's dark eyes. Realizing the Saiyans were the lesser of two immediate evils, and sensing no active intent to slaughter his people from Escallion, the elder reluctantly surrendered the Four-Star Dragon Ball.
By the twenty-first day, their strategy had paid off.
Escallion and Vegeta had successfully secured two Dragon Balls without leaving a trail of slaughtered villages for Frieza's scouters to track. They hid the massive spheres deep within an underwater cave off a remote archipelago, completely invisible to aerial patrols.
Standing atop a high cliff overlooking the endless blue sea, Vegeta adjusted his gloves, his ki suppressed tightly inside his chest. He looked over at Escallion, who was sitting on a jagged rock, methodically analyzing the trajectory of Frieza's main flagship anchored leagues away.
"I still say we should have wiped out that last village," Vegeta grunted, though there was no real venom behind it anymore. "It's unnatural for a Saiyan to leave weaklings breathing."
"It isn't about mercy, Vegeta," Escallion replied without looking up from the terrain map he had scratched into the dirt. "It's about efficiency. Frieza is burning villages to the ground because he thinks brute force is the only way to conquer. We have two of his prize spheres, five dead scout squads on his perimeter, and he still doesn't even know we're on this planet."
Escallion stood up, his dark eyes locking onto the upper atmosphere as a faint, distant rumble echoed through the sky.
"And now," Escallion murmured, sensing a small, unfamiliar energy signature entering the planet's orbit, "it seems we aren't the only uninvited guests on Namek anymore."
High in Namek's upper atmosphere, a strange, bulbous spacecraft broke through the clouds, its sub-light thrusters glowing red as it made a rocky, unannounced descent toward the planet's surface.
Miles away, atop a secluded cliff overlooking a jagged ocean basin, Escallion paused mid-sentence. His eyes snapped upward, narrowing as his senses picked up three distinct, faint ripples in the air.
"Three power levels just entered the atmosphere," Escallion noted coldly, keeping his presence suppressed down to a dull whisper. "Extremely weak. Two are slightly elevated, roughly fifteen hundred to two thousand. The third is barely noticeable."
Vegeta scoffed, not even bothering to turn his head as he leaned against a rock pillar. "Frieza's reinforcements? More foot soldiers for the meat grinder?"
"No," Escallion analyzed, his mind immediately running through the variables. "Frieza's men travel in organized armadas or heavy troop transports, and they don't hide their Ki. This ship is small, solo; it feels...familiar."
Vegeta's head snapped toward Escallion, his dark eyes flaring with sudden recognition. "Earthlings."
The retrofitted Namekian ship slammed into a grassy ridge leagues away, its landing gear digging deep furrows into the teal soil before coming to a complete stop.
Inside the cockpit, the hatch unsealed with a long, depressurizing hiss. Bulma unbuckled her seatbelt and let out a massive, exhausted sigh, slumping back into the pilot's chair.
"We made it..." Bulma gasped, wiping sweat from her forehead. "34 agonizing days in space, but we actually made it! Look at this place, it's gorgeous! The sky is blue-green, the grass is teal, and—"
"Bulma, quiet!" Krillin whispered sharply, his face pale as he clutched his chest. He stood near the open airlock, his body trembling violently.
Gohan stood right beside him, his small fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. The young Saiyan-hybrid was staring out across the serene horizon with wide, terrified eyes.
"Gohan... you feel that too, right?" Krillin stammered, a cold drop of sweat rolling down his cheek.
"Yeah..." Gohan whispered, his voice shaking. "It's awful... There are huge power levels everywhere. But... one of them..."
"It's Vegeta," Krillin choked out, backing away from the hatch door. "I'd recognize that suffocating, evil Ki anywhere. He's here. He's already on Namek!"
"W-What?!" Bulma shrieked, dropping her scanner. "Vegeta?! How could he be here before us?!"
"I don't know!" Krillin panicked, pulling his head back inside the ship. "And it's not just him... there's another power level near his that's completely locked down, almost like it's hiding on purpose... and then there's a monster over to the east that makes Vegeta look like a joke!"
Back on the cliff, Escallion watched the distant horizon where the ship had landed.
"It's the kid and the bald one from Earth," Escallion confirmed, a cold, calculating smirk forming on his lips. "And they brought a woman. They came for the Dragon Balls."
"Foolish insects," Vegeta sneered, his aura surging for a brief second before he clamped it back down. "They survived Earth just to jump straight into the tiger's den. Let's go kill them and take whatever tech they brought."
"No," Escallion said firmly, stepping in front of Vegeta. "Think for a moment. They have no scouters, which means they are tracking energy just like we are. But more importantly, if Frieza detects them first, they become an immediate distraction. Let the Earthlings stumble into Frieza's patrols. While Frieza's army is busy hunting two tiny signatures, we use the chaos to locate the remaining villages."
Vegeta gritted his teeth, glaring at Escallion, but the logic was sound. He let out a harsh scoff and turned away. "Fine. But the moment that kid gets in my way, I'm ripping him in half."
"Agreed," Escallion said flatly, turning back toward the sea. "Let the game begin."
Escallion and Vegeta turned their backs on the distant landing site, dropping into a low, silent glide just inches above Namek's blue-green waters to keep their suppressed signatures from leaving a trail.
Their hideout was tucked away in a shadowed canyon miles from any main patrol route, the hollowed-out ruins of an old Namekian village. Frieza's scout squads had already razed the settlement weeks ago, leaving behind crumbled white stone dwellings and scorched ajisa tree stumps. Because Frieza's army had already checked the quadrant off their maps, it was the safest blind spot on the planet.
Landing quietly on the dusty stone plaza, Escallion reached into a salvaged supply crate taken from an intercepted patrol. He pulled out a large, pale green alien vegetable resembling a cabbage and tossed it through the air.
Vegeta caught it effortlessly with one hand, scowling down at the leaves before taking a harsh, ravenous bite. "Tastes like dirt," he grunted, though he kept eating, his Saiyan appetite demanding fuel after weeks of high-intensity suppression.
Escallion didn't answer. He walked over to the center of a half-collapsed dome structure where two massive, glowing orange spheres rested side by side in the dust.
He sat down squarely on the smooth curve of the Four-Star Dragon Ball, letting his weight settle, resting his arm casually over his knee while his boots nudged the Two-Star Dragon Ball resting beside it. The giant, basketball-sized spheres emitted a soft, warm amber glow that illuminated the dark ruins around them.
"Two down," Escallion said quietly, his dark eyes fixed on the entrance of the canyon. "Frieza likely has three or four by now, which leaves only one or two unaccounted for across the entire planet."
Vegeta leaned against a scorched stone pillar, chewing the last of the green vegetable before wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand.
"Let Frieza hold them," Vegeta sneered, his eyes reflecting the amber light of the spheres. "The moment he gets all seven together, he'll realize he doesn't know the chant to summon the dragon. That's when we strike."
"And the Earthlings just landed right in the middle of his territory," Escallion added, a faint, cold smirk touching his lips as he drummed his fingers against the Four-Star ball. "If we play this right, Frieza, Zarbon, and Dodoria will be so focused on wiping out the new intruders that they won't notice their prize balls slipping right through their fingers."
Escallion stood up from the Four-Star ball, his boots making a soft crunch in the dust as he walked toward the open archway of the ruined dome.
"Where are you going?" Vegeta asked, his dark eyes tracking him from the shadows of the pillar. "Frieza's patrols could sweep this quadrant again. Staying out in the open is a useless risk."
"I am going to meditate," Escallion said flatly, stepping out into the perpetual daylight of Namek's three suns.
Vegeta scoffed, wiping a hand across his mouth. Over the past few weeks traveling together, he had watched Escallion do this repeatedly, and every single time it grated on his nerves.
"Still doing that useless garbage?" Vegeta sneered, leaning his shoulder against the scorched stone wall. "Sitting in the dirt staring at nothing. It's ridiculous, Escallion. Saiyans don't sit around trying to find 'peace.' We train, or we slaughter."
Escallion stopped at the edge of a high stone ledge overlooking the quiet, teal river below. He didn't bother turning around.
"My father taught me the practice," Escallion replied smoothly, his tone cool and steady against the warm Namekian breeze. "You can call it rubbish all you like, Vegeta, but it has nothing to do with peace for the sake of being soft. It is about absolute control. Keeping the primal urge locked away so the mind remains sharp."
Vegeta crossed his arms, letting out a sharp grunt. While he still thought the whole ritual was an absurd waste of time, a bizarre quirk from his pseudo-partner in this crusade, he couldn't deny the results he had witnessed firsthand.
"The Oozaru transformation relies on the wild, volatile blood of our race responding to Blutz waves," Escallion continued, lowering himself onto the flat surface of a smooth gray boulder. He crossed his legs, resting his wrists lightly on his knees as he straightened his spine. "Most Saiyans become mindless beasts because they let instinct consume them completely. My father learned to anchor his mind beneath that rage. It is the reason I was able to ignore the artificial moons and moons in general. Your control of the form is commendable but half-baked."
Vegeta's jaw tightened, his gloved fists clenching so hard the leather groaned. The sheer fact remained: Escallion had stood on the battlefield completely unaffected by the Blutz radiation. A testament to his bravado, seeing no point in continuing, the prince unclenched his fists.
Vegeta scoffed again, though the bitterness had lost its edge, replaced by a begrudging acceptance of Escallion's strange habits.
Escallion closed his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath that filled his chest before releasing it in a quiet, measured exhale. His pale purple Ki sank so deep into his core that his physical presence vanished completely into the surrounding landscape, leaving him in perfect, silent stillness under Namek's three suns.
Deep within the absolute stillness of his meditation, Escallion felt it: a primal power welling up inside him.
It was the raw, feral energy of the Great Ape, the towering, unbridled force that slept inside the bloodline of every Saiyan. But instead of relying on a full moon to trigger a physical transformation, Escallion was doing something far more dangerous. He was attempting to draw the monstrous, tenfold multiplication of the Oozaru's raw strength and force it into the compact, agile frame of his humanoid body.
For the past three weeks, during every silent hour spent in the Namekian dirt, he had been probing the hidden mechanics of his own lineage. He knew the transformation was ultimately triggered by a precise nervous response, a brain reaction to a specific frequency of light.
If the brain only needs the signal, Escallion reasoned, his teeth grinding together in deep concentration, I can supply it myself.
Escallion began rapidly fluctuating his Ki internally, pulsing his own bio-energy at precise, high-frequency intervals. In an attempt to mimic the feeling given off by the blutz waves, picturing the moon, he locks in on the feeling given off by it and releases his ki in slow pulses.
His body instantly bought the illusion. His Saiyan blood surged violently, reacting to the artificial signal as if a glowing full moon had suddenly opened directly inside his central nervous system.
The dormant Oozaru power flooded his pathways, and Escallion moved to trap it.
'Draw it in,' Escallion commanded his own mind, his teeth grinding together in silent concentration. 'Don't let it expand.'
A sudden, violent shockwave of pure force erupted from his seated form.
The flat boulder beneath him instantly fractured, spider-webbing with deep cracks before shattering into fine gray dust. The teal river below the cliff violently parted, pushed back by a sudden, invisible gravity well.
Inside the ruined dome, Vegeta slammed his back against the stone wall, his jaw dropping in shock. The air inside the canyon had suddenly turned thick, heavy, and suffocating, like the atmospheric pressure right before a continent splits open.
"What the...?" Vegeta gasped, his eyes widening as he stared out at the ledge.
Escallion hadn't transformed into a giant beast, but his physical presence was swelling exponentially. A dense, jagged aura of deep, translucent purple ignited around his body, not the smooth, calm haze of his standard Ki, but a wild, crushing energy that hummed with a deep, guttural vibration. His dark hair whipped violently upward in the static discharge, and for a fraction of a second, his eyes flashed with a feral, yellow-tinted gleam before his iron discipline forced them back to cold, obsidian clarity.
The power surged, doubling, tripling, pushing toward a threshold that threatened to tear his own muscles from the bone.
Then, with a low, controlled exhale, Escallion clamped the valve shut.
The crushing pressure vanished instantly. The parted river slammed back together with a loud splash, and the jagged purple aura dissolved into nothingness. Escallion hovered an inch above the shattered remains of his boulder, taking a long, slow breath as he dropped back onto his boots.
He looked down at his gloved hands. They were trembling slightly, micro-fractures in his knuckles rapidly knitting themselves back together as his body adapted to the sheer strain of the contained power.
Vegeta stormed out of the ruins, his face pale with a mixture of disbelief and furious intrigue.
"What in the hell was that?!" Vegeta demanded, stepping up to the edge of the fractured ledge. "Your power level just spiked into a completely different tier for three seconds! You didn't transform, but that energy... it felt like..."
"The Great Ape," Escallion said quietly, his voice cool and steady despite the sweat glistening on his forehead. He turned his dark eyes toward the Prince. "The transformation is just a physical container, Vegeta. The power itself resides in our blood. If you can master the mind, you don't need the moon to access it."
Vegeta's eyes narrowed into fierce, dangerous slits as he forced a sharp, mocking laugh to break the tense silence.
"Bluffing," Vegeta sneered, crossing his arms tightly over his chest and stepping forward. "You're bluffing, Escallion. You flickered your Ki for two seconds and expect me to believe you've tapped into the Oozaru's power without a moon?"
He scoffed, turning his face away with a dismissive wave of his gloved hand, though his jaw remained tightly clenched.
"It's a parlor trick," Vegeta spat, his voice laced with a bitter mix of denial and defensive pride. "A Saiyan's blood doesn't yield to mind games and cheap Ki tricks. The Great Ape is a physical absolute, a birthright of mass and destruction. There is no way you, of all people, could manage to achieve something like that."
Escallion didn't argue. He simply stood on the edge of the shattered ledge, brushing a speck of gray dust off his shoulder armor, his expression entirely unreadable.
"Believe whatever helps you sleep in these ruins, Vegeta," Escallion said flatly, his dark eyes meeting the Prince's furious glare. "When Frieza forces our hand, you'll see whether it's a parlor trick when I take his head off."
Vegeta stopped dead in his tracks just inside the archway, his head snapping toward the horizon as his eyes widened in sudden realization.
"Damn it!" Vegeta snarled, spinning back around with his face dark with fury. "You idiot! You flickered your Ki, but for three seconds that signal flared like a beacon! In this dead zone, a spike like that is a lighthouse to anyone with a functioning scouter!"
Without waiting for a response, Vegeta lunged into the ruined dome and scooped up the heavy, glowing Two-Star Dragon Ball under one arm and the Four-Star Dragon Ball with his other hand.
With a harsh grunt, Vegeta turned and hurled the massive Four-Star sphere straight at Escallion's chest.
Escallion caught the basketball-sized sphere cleanly against his ribs, blinking as the reality of the mistake set in. He looked down at the glowing orb, then out at the canyon, his mind drawing a blank on where to head next.
"Frieza's scouts might be idiots, but Zarbon and Dodoria aren't," Vegeta spat, keeping his voice to a low, lethal whisper as he tucked the Two-Star ball firmly against his side. "That brief blip was more than enough for their scouters to lock onto these coordinates. They'll have a strike team on this valley in less than ten minutes."
Escallion wiped sweat from his brow, his teeth clenched as he looked toward the sky. "Where are we supposed to go now?"
"Just run!" Vegeta growled, dropping into a low, crouching posture. "Keep your energy locked down and follow me. If we get intercepted because you wanted to play with your energy, I'm throwing you to Zarbon myself."
Without another word, both Saiyans launched themselves off the ruined ledge, hugging the jagged canyon floor and vanishing into the teal mist just as the faint, high-pitched whine of approaching scouter thrusters began to echo in the sky.
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A/N: Well, turns out that Broly isn't the only mutant Saiyan. There is lore behind Escallion's lineage, but we will get into that later.